Yellow Dog

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT YELLOW DOG - PAGE 5

By Michael Kilian and John Keilman, Tribune staff reporters. Michael Kilian reported from Washington and John Keilman reported from Chicago | February 15, 2004

The Vietnam-era National Guard, in which President Bush served from 1968 to 1973, was to some degree a loosely run outfit in which absences were tolerated, but it was hardly an anything-goes operation, according to officials and veterans. "The policy at the time was `commander's discretion,'" said National Guard Bureau spokesman Reggie Saville, referring to absences and early departures. "Practices varied from unit to unit, but it was not unusual for someone [like Bush] to be let out early."

The traditionally hawkish AFL-CIO on Monday sought to thwart a rancorous debate over the urgings of some liberal unionists that U.S. foreign aid to Central America be severely limited or even halted. The federation's biennial convention opened with a typically vivid critique of the Reagan administration by AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. But the most heated developments apparently took place in private rooms off the convention floor. These discussions apparently revolved around the deep split between the establishment union view that the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy should be to fight communism, as opposed to a more liberal view that the priority should be offering democratic alternatives.

Dave Barry Talks Back, (Crown, $9). In his 10th book, a collection of his syndicated columns, Barry, the Beethoven of the Booger Joke (his acknowledgements specifically exclude newspaper editors who cut them out), relies heavily on reader mail of all kinds, principally those who have sent him clipped reports of exploding things-mostly animals but also the occasional hairdo-of which there appears to have been an epidemic. When Barry wrote a column in his Mr. Language Person mode, he had been asked whether it was correct to say "A bomb has been placed on one of you`re airplanes," or "A bomb has been placed, on one of you`re airplanes."

Since 1956 Jules Feiffer's satirical cartoons have spoofed pop culture and politics with witty abandon. On Wednesday they come to life in Northlight Theatre's "Feiffer's America." The world premiere is the product of a year's collaboration between Feiffer and director Russell Vandenbroucke. This will be Vandenbroucke's first Northlight staging since he replaced Michael Maggio last year as the theater's artistic director. "Feiffer's America" runs through May 15 at 2300 Green Bay Rd., Evanston; 869-7278.

The Lace Reader By Brunonia Barry William Morrow, 400 pages, $24.95 Novelist Brunonia Barry has pulled off a major feat with her debut, "The Lace Reader." It's a gorgeously written literary novel that's also a doozy of a thriller, capped with a jaw-dropping denouement that will leave even the most careful reader gasping. Even before the book started making the rounds of critics, Barry had produced major buzz. "The Lace Reader," originally self-published in 2007, was picked up by William Morrow in a reported $2 million deal for it and one future novel.

You get the tone of Liz Carpenter's "Presidential Humor" when you see the Mt. Rushmore cartoon on the cover: Abraham Lincoln is holding up two fingers behind George Washington's head. "I think the book is going to do well, and the fact that I brought it out at age 86 is a matter of pride," says Carpenter, who was Lady Bird Johnson's press secretary. She points out that she can come up with presidential jokes because she has been around so many of them over the years as a reporter and a White House staffer.

Yellow Dog Democrats distressed at the plight of their embattled leader now have a morale booster on-line. No, it's not a full retraction from Monica, but a one-minute game that lets you help Bill bash the opposition. "Good Willie Hunting," at www.nvisiondesign.com, can be played on-line or downloaded (a better option since the site's pretty busy). It's like the "Whack-a-Mole" arcade game, but the whacker is Bill Clinton and the whackees include Ken, Newt, Sam, Hillary and Monica.

"Go, Dog. Go!" isn't "War and Peace." Even on the extra-profound pages, you're lucky if you can find more than two lines. "The green dog is up." "The yellow dog is down." That's about as thematically dense as it gets. Actually, "Go, Dog. Go!" reminds me of Tom Stoppard's literary opus, "The Coast of Utopia," a hit this season at New York's Lincoln Center. Just kidding. The dogs aren't even Russian. But if you're 5 years old in body or heart, this tale of oft-behatted pooches lazing, paddling, skating and, above all, partying can be as close to your cultural soul as a Wendy Wasserstein play to a denizen of the Upper East Side.

Deep in the rugged hills of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a meandering river harbors giant fish that once thrived throughout Lake Superior and its tributaries. The last spawning run of coaster brook trout along the south shore of the Great Lake has been protected for years. About the only thing interrupting the thick patch of wilderness surrounding their river is fresh wolf tracks in the snow. But 10 miles inland, where the Salmon Trout River begins as a tiny brook, men are digging for riches.

US. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), a supremely real-estate-savvy politician and former chairman of the Chicago City Council's Committee on Real Estate, has been living almost property tax free in his gentrified Bucktown neighborhood. Gutierrez resides in a gracious home worth about $340,000. But last year he paid only $274.42 for his 1996 property taxes--up a whopping 10 bucks from the year before. His next-door neighbor, with an almost-identical home, constructed by the same builder, paid more than $5,000 in property taxes.